Paris 2008: All New Volvo XC60

Car sales have been poor around the world lately. As more and more automakers see their profits suddenly dwindle, Volvo has been dealing with such a situation for a while now. The sales of the Swedish marque have not been encouraging and that makes this new model a very important product for Volvo. The first all new Volvo in a many years (besides the low volume C30), the XC60 has been handed the daunting task of winning back customers that have been turning their backs on the brand and though the XC60 will only be officially launched in 2009, marketing has already begun.

Volvo has unleashed its new campaign for the CUV already with the tagline, “The new Volvo XC60. From Sweden with löv.” Volvo is obviously trying to play on its Swedish origins, something like how Ikea does except there is a small problem. The “lov” in the tagline doesn’t translate to “From Sweden with love” as Volvo would like us to believe but rather lov with the umlaut directly translates to leaves. Yes, those green rustling objects that grow on trees.

According to AutoBlog tipster Caitlin, the campaign is doomed from the start due to the misrepresentation of its tagline  As deliberate as it may be, Lov without the umlaut means ‘vacation’ or ‘break’, which sounds like a better advertising angle for a CUV than leaves, but just doesn’t look as “Swedish” in print. The proper translation of ‘love’ into Swedish is “kärlek”, so when you begin seeing the XC60 sometime next March, just remember that it comes from Sweden with kärlek. As to how well it will sell, that just depends on how much love customers have for the XC60, it does look good though.